


You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory

by ScienceOfficerWillowRosenberg (workaholicSlacker)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 10:15:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4783664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/workaholicSlacker/pseuds/ScienceOfficerWillowRosenberg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set between seasons 5 and 6.  Dawn's still grieving Buffy, and Spike has angry music.  Angry music is the sort of thing that helps, right?  The title's taken from a Johnny Thunders (ex-New York Dolls) song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory

It was after curfew, and Dawn was pounding on the door of Spike’s crypt. Willow and Tara had been making very sure she’d been going through the stages of grief on schedule. Hence the lingering in ‘anger.’ It had been an evil year--find out you’re a key, then lose your mother and sister? Why, it was enough to make a kid sneak out and talk to the least responsible adult she could find.

Spike opened up, and looked down at her. “I think this is the part where I tell you not to wander around strange graveyards at night or some other such bollocks. Or remind you that it’s a school night. Is this a school night? Not exactly concerned with the days of the week, the way I live.”

“You don’t exactly live.”

“‘S a figure of speech. But what are you doing here? Takes a pair sneaking out like this. Going to make me admire you, niblet.”

“I can’t sleep. Or don’t want to sleep. Or something. Everything sucks right now, and even Xander’s trying to act like everything will be normal for me. You’re punk, right?”

“Well, I was around before that.”

Dawn swooped past him into the crypt. There were CDs stacked, for certain values of stacked, in one general area of the floor. She sat down, cross-legged, beside them.

“So play me something,” she said, “Something that says fuck. Something so loud it hurts. This is what kids listen to when everything’s terrible. And everything’s terrible, so…”

Spike sat down next to her. “Well, if catharsis is your sort of thing, we can listen to Under the Big Black Sun. Band’s just called X. Lead singer lost her own sister. Some of the songs are about that.”

Dawn didn’t think she wanted someone else’s grief barging in on her own. There weren’t other dead sisters in the world right now. “Maybe later,” she said, and began rooting through the piles of CDs. “Aren’t you old enough to own vinyl, anyway?”

“Lost my collection to a would-be Van Helsing in Manchester. Got him good, though. Er, sorry. Anyhow, the CDs are stolen. ‘S why the collection’s so big.”

“You’re a bad influence.”

“I could be much worse. I’ve been positively evil.”

She pulled out a Dead Boys album. “Friends of yours?”

“I thought young, loud, and snotty was more your specialty,” said Spike. Dawn obligingly stuck out her tongue. “Honestly though, little bit, you don’t want to listen to that. It’s evil shit. Real He-Man Woman Hater’s Club stuff.”

“I can handle it. I bet I’ve listened to worse.”

“Let me be clear here: there’s one song that I thought would be perfect to play for Angelus. He liked the lyrics, but he thought it was too noisy. Bloody boring old fart.”

“Well, now I have to know.”

“Suppose you do. The chorus is ‘Write on your face with my pretty knife, wanna toy with your precious life, I want you to know what love is.’ Fits him, doesn’t it?”

Dawn shuddered. It occurred to her that for the civilians of the world, that sort of talk was purely fantasy. She’d been living alongside it since before her teens.

“How about this one? I like this angry girl on the cover.” It was Sonic Youth’s ‘Evol.’

Spike remembered his first drive into Sunnydale, trying to get Dru to sing ‘We’re gonna killllll…the California girls,’ along with him. He shook his head. “Too arthouse. Anyway, when did you become such a music lover?”

“Giles has all his records. I knew he was cool. No one believed it, but I knew. Back when I was...God, I wasn’t ever in seventh grade.”

“ _Giles_ listens to bloody Cream.”

“And you, apparently, listen to Elvis bloody Costello. Isn’t he a little wimpy for you, Sid Vicious?”

“First off, Sid Vicious was a sodding idiot and a worse bassist than Glen Matlock. And second, just put on track eleven and listen to what he’s singing about, yeah?

Dawn did. The drums exploded out of Spike’s little speakers, and then the organ descended with just a little menace. The lyrics were all lonely and angry and angry about being lonely-- _Sometimes I think love is just a tumor, you’ve got to cut it out._ And the chorus came:

  
_Sometimes I almost feel_  
_just like a human being_  
_It’s you_  
_Not just another mouth_  
_in the lipstick vogue_

“Oh,” said Dawn. “This is how you felt about her, isn’t it?”

“It is, niblet. It is.” he paused, like he was thinking. “You know, there’s this song I don’t have here, by this band I don’t really like. It’s called ‘Jean is Dead,’ and it’s about this kid, and his girlfriend, or the girl he likes but doesn’t like him back, she offs herself. There’s hardly any lyrics, but what he says is ‘Now I’m alone.” That’s the chorus: “Now you’re gone and I’m alone.” He’s just thinking about what her death does to him, yeah? Totally selfish.”

Dawn began to laugh. Her eyes were watering and her chest hurt, but she was laughing. “He gets it.” She laughed, or cried, or something, some more. “Oh god, he gets it.”

Spike’s voice was choked. “I suppose he does, at that.”

**Author's Note:**

> The playlist, such as it is, of songs mentioned in this fic is as follows:
> 
> You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory-Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers  
> Come Back To Me--X  
> What Love Is--The Dead Boys  
> Expressway to Yr Skull--Sonic Youth  
> Lipstick Vogue--Elvis Costello  
> Jean is Dead--Descendents


End file.
